Abstract

Can transformative law become an ambitious program for rethinking the theoretical basis for our understanding of law and its position in society? A program which explicitly goes beyond emotion and ideology. One way of dealing with both emotion and the devotion to ideology is, as also argued by Karl Mannheim back in 1926, to deploy an analytical lens, i.e. to substitute emotion and ideology with sophisticated theorizing. A form of theorizing which only is possible if deployed while maintaining proper analytical distance to the object matter. On this background one might distinguish between three models of transformative law: Instrumentalization, Political Programming or Normative Selection, with the latter providing a third way between the two hitherto dominant approaches.